Today, we are releasing Custom Translator version 2. The newest version of Custom Translator boasts higher quality customized translations than version 1 and allows you to keep your training data in the region of your choice, if desired, in order to meet your corporate data security, data privacy, and regulatory requirements.

This upgrade to v2 will roll out in two phases to provide quicker translation quality improvements (in both accuracy and fluency) to our customers and enable regional data residency, with more regions to come. Today, we announce that phase one is live.

Higher quality translations

With Custom Translator v2, we continue our commitment to breaking down language barriers and preserving culture heritage with domain-specific data– one language at a time, one region at a time. Custom Translator v2 ups the quality game by upgrading to the newest version of Microsoft Translator’s state-of-the-art neural machine translation (NMT) architecture. These standard, general domain NMT models power Microsoft products such as Office 365, Speech Services, Teams, Bing.com/Translator, and more.

Many of our customers have reported seeing better translation quality when using a dynamic dictionary with Translator’s general domain models. We validated and quantified the quality improvement seen and decided to enable this feature as the first phase in Custom Translator service upgrade.

Deploying dictionary files through a Custom Translator model instead of using the dynamic dictionary feature in a Translator API call simplifies the translation process and reduces the maintenance cost. We expect more than 40% of our customers who train dictionary only models would immediately reap the quality improvement of Custom Translator v2 models.

Now you can use your own domain data in a dictionary document type to customize Translator’s general domain models in all Custom Translator supported languages, while continuing to build models with training document types on Custom Translator v1. You can view the complete language list in the Custom Translator Update in Azure.

Keep your data in your selected region

For customers who were previously blocked from using Custom Translator service because of corporate or regulatory requirements, today we are enabling regional data residency in Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, and more US regions to meet your needs. If you select a region to create projects, your uploaded documents and trained models are kept at rest in the region you selected.

What you can do with Microsoft Custom Translator

Build custom models with your domain specific terminology and translate real-time using Translator on Azure.

Use the Custom Translator service to build translation solutions to help globalize your business and improve customer interactions.

For more information on Microsoft Translator, please visit microsoft.com/translator/business.

As much as we love the themed events in Tetris 99, we don’t always catch or complete them in time.

The good news is Nintendo is running a special week-long event in the game from 14th August – 22nd August, allowing players to unlock three existing themes that they may have missed out on previously.

As you can see in the tweet above, it sees the return of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons theme, the Luigi’s Mansion 3 theme, and the Ring Fit Adventure theme and will be broken up into three separate rounds.

Instead of the usual 100 event points required to unlock rewards, this upcoming Maximus Cup will only require you to reach 50 events point. Did you miss out on any of these themes? Will you be trying to grab them this time around? Tell us below.

It’s official: Pikmin 3 Deluxe is arriving on the Nintendo Switch this October and will come packed with all of the DLC and even some brand new side story content featuring Olimar and Louie.

What does this mean for the future of Pikmin 3 on the Wii U, though? While we wouldn’t normally be asking a question like this – as discovered by Nintendo Everything, the original version of this game has now been delisted from this particular eShop (this includes the removal of the DLC as well). Yep, it’s gone!

On the Nintendo website, the Wii U game page for Pikmin 3 is there, but there’s no longer a way to purchase the game. If you own a physical copy of this title, you can obviously still play it on your Wii U and if you’ve already bought a digital copy from the system’s eShop, you shouldn’t have any problems downloading the game.

Nintendo has pulled this same move in the past with games like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze – ahead of ‘Deluxe’ re-releases on Switch (although in saying this, Tropical Freeze has since returned to the Wii U eShop and is available for purchase). Pikmin 3 on Wii U was priced at $19.99 and the Deluxe version is valued at $59.99 on Nintendo’s hybrid system.

Did you manage to grab a digital copy of Pikmin 3 for Wii U before it was pulled? Could this just be a temporary removal? How do you feel about Nintendo taking down games while the Wii U eShop is still up and running? Share your thoughts below.

GDC Summer starts tomorrow, and since this will be the first all-digital Game Developers Conference organizers want to quickly remind you what to expect when you log on to attend!

Taking place Tuesday through Thursday, GDC Summer will have an expanded schedule that goes from 6 AM Pacific to 8:30 PM Pacific each day to better accommodate attendees in different time zones around the world.

That means you can look forward to both morning and evening sessions, separated by a long lunch break reserved for networking and special features. There will also be experiential events scheduled at the beginning and end of each day to jumpstart or wrap up your day at this unique digital event.

And don’t worry about disrupting your schedule to attend everything live; all live session broadcasts will immediately be archived on the event platform for on-demand access the week of GDC Summer, so you can create your own conference schedule.

Here’s what to expect from all the different options available to you when you attend virtually this week!

GDC Summer Schedule, August 4-6

• 6:00 am – 7:00 am PT Wake up/Wrap up with GDC
• 7:00 am – 7:00 pm PT Conference Sessions, Interactive Sessions, Sponsored Sessions, Community Channel Sessions, Student Channel Sessions*, GDC Pitch, Daily GDC Summer Puzzle Challenge, GDC Podcast Live! hosted by Gamasutra
• 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm PT GDC After Hours

* Student Channel programming will only take place on Thursday, August 6

Conference Content

Sessions: GDC Summer sessions will be live broadcasts delivered by a single speaker or panel, with live speaker Q&A during the presentation. After their “first run” these sessions will be archived for on-demand access during and after the event.

Sponsored Sessions: These are your opportunity to hear from leading game technology companies firsthand about the latest products, tools, services, and techniques.

Student Channel: Learn from industry experts and professionals to help jump start your career through lectures, interactive sessions, and small-group discussion.

Community Channel Sessions: Taking place on the Community Channel and available to all pass holders, community channel sessions will address topics ranging from diversity to accessibility to quality of life within the realm of social advocacy in the game industry.

Interactive Sessions

Ask Me Anything (AMAs): GDC Summer will also host live, interactive 30-minute “Ask Me Anything” sessions featuring industry experts answering questions related to specific game development topics. A number of luminaries have already signed on to take part, including Funomena CEO Robin Hunicke and award-winning composer Winifred Phillips!

Skill-Building Series: 45-minute instructional presentations from expert instructors as they take attendees through an exemplary project and review the tools and techniques used to create the work. You’ll have the chance to quickly get up to speed on “Pixel Art and Animation in the Hi-Bit Age” with experienced artist and game designer Tyriq Plummer, for example, or bone up on “How Game Studios Should Plan Fundraising – Learning Best Practices” with veteran investor Teppei Tsutsui.

Roundtables: 45-minute live and interactive peer-to-peer discussions on open ended topics, facilitated by moderators who keep the flow of discussion inspired and moving. Constructive controversy and debate are welcome in these discussions, which include a Marketing & Discovery roundtable led by Kitfox Games communication director Victoria Tran and a Building Your Live Service Team roundtable facilitated by veteran producer Grant Shonkwiler.

Networking

Meetings & Networking: With advanced filtering and AI-driven technology, GDC Summer gives attendees access to identify, contact, and request and receive meetings with fellow attendees and sponsors via chat or video meeting.
Mentoring & Portfolio Reviews: Find and connect with a seasoned game development professional at GDC Summer to gain invaluable guidance or a portfolio review via chat or video meeting. Simply use the filter options in the networking tool to identify willing professionals in your discipline, or those seeking mentoring.

Showcase Features

Sponsor Showcase: Expand your professional network and join leading companies in game development ready to provide solutions to your business challenges from 11am – 3pm PT.

Indie Showcase: Learn about innovative projects from emerging and independent developers and meet the people who created them. Visit the studio’s dedicated pages and don’t miss their game demo sessions!

University Showcase: Meet with colleges and universities featuring some of the best and brightest students and education programs in the games industry. Learn more about their offerings by visiting their pages and setting up an exploratory meeting.

Special Events

Community Channel Special Events: From yoga classes to mixologist tutorials, we’ve programmed three exciting days of experiential events to help fill in the gaps and get you out of your chair (or at least into a more relaxing headspace) so you can keep learning.

GDC Summer Puzzles: Play through the GDC Summer event platform (alone or with a small team) to solve the daily puzzle, gaining in complexity throughout the week. Submit your answers for a chance to win GDC merch each day, or the grand prize of GDC 2021 All Access passes! Note: completing the puzzles may require some interaction with our sponsors, resulting in your profile information being shared with them.

GDC Pitch: Selected studios will pitch their games to a panel of investors and publishers followed by questions, advice, and feedback before the judges declare the day’s “Best Pitch”.

GDC Store: Grab your GDC Summer products at the all-digital GDC Store!

For more details on GDC Summer, scheduled to take place virtually August 4th through the 6th, visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa Tech

The with statement replaces former try...finally blocks in Python. It ensures that clean-up code is executed. For example, it closes open files before leaving the block. Consider this code example (assuming this code is stored in a file named 'code.py'):

with open('code.py') as code: print(code.read())

The output of this code would be the code itself (for nerds: a piece of code that generates itself is called a Quine):

''' OUTPUT

with open('code.py') as code: print(code.read()) '''

No matter what goes wrong inside the with block, Python will close the open file before moving on in the code. This way, you don’t need to enclose the code with a try...except statement.

Single Expression ‘With’ Statement in One Line

Problem: Can you write the with statement in a single line of code?

Solution: Yes, you can write the with statement in a single line of code if the loop body consists only of one statement:

with open('code.py') as code: print(code.read())

In general, you can write any indentation block (like if statements, with environments, or while loops) in a single line of code if the body consists of only one statement.

Exercise: The following interactive code throws an error if you run it. Fix the bug and run the correct code!

Multi Expression ‘With’ Statement in One Line

If the body consists of multiple statements, you can use a semicolon between the different statements:

with open('code.py') as code: print('The code:') print(code.read())

The previous code block becomes:

with open('code.py') as code: print('The code:'); print(code.read())

Note that in this particular instance, the semantics actually change because the code reads its own source file! But in all other cases, the semantics remain the same.

As soon as you have nested blocks like a for loop inside a with block, you cannot use this approach anymore because the code would become ambiguous. Believe it or not but the indentation serves a real purpose in Python!

Nested Indentation Blocks in a One-Line ‘With’ Statement

If you know the Finxter tutorials, you also know that I seldomly conclude with such a statement “XYZ is impossible” because in most cases, it isn’t. If you’re in doubt whether you can compress an algorithm into a single line of code—don’t. You can compress all algorithms into a single line!

In most cases, you can avoid nested blocks by using list comprehension (rather than a for loop) or the ternary operator (rather than an if block).

Consider the following example with a for loop inside a with block:

with open('code.py') as code: for i in range(10): print(code.read())

Problem: One-Linerize a nested with block!

Wrong Solution: Write it into a single line:

Correct Solution: Replace the inner for loop with a list comprehension statement!

with open('code.py') as code: [print(code.read()) for i in range(10)]

While this code runs and solves the problem, please note that the chosen example does not make a lot of sense. The file is read only once—even if you place it into a for loop. The reason is that the file reader is done reading the file after the first iteration. In subsequent iterations it only reads the remaining characters (there aren’t any) so the output is not 10x only 1x the file contents.

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!

Python One-Liners Book

Python programmers will improve their computer science skills with these useful one-liners.

Python One-Liners will teach you how to read and write “one-liners”: concise statements of useful functionality packed into a single line of code. You’ll learn how to systematically unpack and understand any line of Python code, and write eloquent, powerfully compressed Python like an expert.

The book’s five chapters cover tips and tricks, regular expressions, machine learning, core data science topics, and useful algorithms. Detailed explanations of one-liners introduce key computer science concepts and boost your coding and analytical skills. You’ll learn about advanced Python features such as list comprehension, slicing, lambda functions, regular expressions, map and reduce functions, and slice assignments. You’ll also learn how to:

•  Leverage data structures to solve real-world problems, like using Boolean indexing to find cities with above-average pollution
•  Use NumPy basics such as array, shape, axis, type, broadcasting, advanced indexing, slicing, sorting, searching, aggregating, and statistics
•  Calculate basic statistics of multidimensional data arrays and the K-Means algorithms for unsupervised learning
•  Create more advanced regular expressions using grouping and named groups, negative lookaheads, escaped characters, whitespaces, character sets (and negative characters sets), and greedy/nongreedy operators
•  Understand a wide range of computer science topics, including anagrams, palindromes, supersets, permutations, factorials, prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, obfuscation, searching, and algorithmic sorting

By the end of the book, you’ll know how to write Python at its most refined, and create concise, beautiful pieces of “Python art” in merely a single line.

Get your Python One-Liners Now!!